Lloyd Blankfein Presented the Goldman Sachs-Fortune Global Women Leaders Award
During the Summit, Lloyd Blankfein presented the fifth annual Goldman Sachs-Fortune Global Women Leaders Award to three women who are passing along their business knowledge and mentoring experiences to disadvantaged women in developing countries.
Fortune convened more than 400 top female executives from the private sector, government, academia, media and civil society for the 14th annual Most Powerful Women Summit.
The award is part of a broader partnership between 10,000 Women and Fortune’s Most Powerful Women franchise.
This year, the three awardees included 10,000 Women graduate Madhu Uday from India, Catherine Nyambala from Kenya and Precious Simba from Zimbabwe.
Madhu is the founder of Earthen Symphony, a Bangalore-based art studio established in 1995 which specializes in the design and execution of murals and artifacts for corporate and retail clients. Through the Fortune award, Madhu will establish a skills training and mentoring center for underprivileged young mothers in India. The center will be staffed by her business’ employees who will volunteer their time to train each woman, free of cost, over a two-month period.
The other two award recipients are alumnae of the Fortune/US State Department Global Women Mentoring Program, which inspired their own nonprofit projects.
Catherine Nyambala is the founder of STEMAfrica, an organization that promotes careers and innovation in science, technology, engineering and math. With the award funds, Catherine plans to develop a new mentoring program for young women scientists and engineers in Nairobi, Kenya.
Precious Simba, founder of Girls Development Initiative, a girls’ empowerment organization in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, plans to expand a youth outreach and mentoring program to empower at-risk girls in Zimbabwe and prevent them from dropping out of school.
To date, 10,000 Women has reached more than 7,000 women across 43 countries through a network of 80 academic and nonprofit partners. Eighteen months after graduation, nearly 80 percent of graduates have increased revenues and more than 66 percent have hired new employees. 90 percent of women also mentor others in their families and communities, and numerous other women have set up their own NGOs in order to extend the reach of their knowledge gained through 10,000 Women.